Review of Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Kaohsiung in Economy

Hello everyone, welcome to the second part of the trip from Munich Germany to Kaohsiung Taiwan. This report will cover the flight from Hong Kong to Kaohsiung with Cathay Pacific Airways. I chose this flight because originally it was operated by the new A321neo, but afterwards it was replaced by the A330-300. This is for me a bit disappointed.

After arriving from Munich, we headed directly to the transit point at gate 35 and after passing through the security check, I returned to the departure floor. At this moment, the gate for my flight to Kaohsiung had not been announced yet. Since there were several hours until our next boarding, we just found a seat to take a rest and do some plane spotting.
B-KPR was preparing its flight to New York JFK as CX830 at 9:30am.

B-HNW would depart to Nagoya with a stopover at Taipei as CX530 at 9:05am.

United Airlines B787-9, N28987 departing to Bangkok as UA820. This route was re-launched just a few days ago in 26th October. After 11 years, United Airlines finally returned to Bangkok. The flight take off from the Los Angeles International Airport, make a brief transit stop in Hong Kong for 2 hours, before continuing their journey to Bangkok.

Next to the United Airlines B787-9 parked another United Airlines B777-300ER, N2243U arriving from San Francisco in early morning as UA877. Travellers from San Francisco can connect with the previous plane from Los Angeles and travel onward to Bangkok with United Airlines B787-9.

At last we decided to go to McDonald for breakfast. We spent around 25 minutes there and then we decided to leave because it was so crowded. We seated at somewhere close to gate 23 and waited for the gate information. I tried walking back to gate 64 to have a look on the plane that brought me to Hong Kong last night. The plane would fly to Brisbane as CX157 at 12:25pm. 

Not long after that the gate for our flight was indicated and we walked slowed to it even though it was still quite early.
At 8:54am, I arrived at my departing gate 44. The plane had not arrived yet. The scheduled boarding time was 10:45am.

Next to our gate parked a Turkish Airlines B787-9, TC-LLN would fly back to Istanbul at 10:00am as TK171. Since June 2025, Turkish Airlines operates a second flight between Hong Kong and Istanbul, one in the morning and the other one at night.

Garuda Indonesia A330-300 PK-GHC just arrived from Jakarta as GA860.

Cebu Pacific A330-900neo PR-3911 arriving from Manila as 5J110

At 9:42am, finally our plane showed up at gate which just flew back from Hyderabad

My ride to Kaohsiung, Cathay Pacific Airways A330-300, B-LAD delivered to Cathay Pacific Airways in August 2006. B-LAD belongs to the long haul A330 fleet for Cathay Pacific Airways. It is J28/Y265 configured with 293 seats in total. It is really hard to imagine that Cathay Pacific Airways has 6 different configuration of A330.

Eventually boarding was started at 10:24am.

My seat 46A. This version of the economy seats was debuted in 2012.

Seat map of Cathay Pacific Airways Type 33J.

View out of my seat.

The in-flight entertainment menu.

Economy cabin view.

Seat pocket item included the Cathay magazine, safety instruction card and the headset. The pocket was very dirty inside and obviously it had not been cleaned for ages.

At 10:38am, announcement from the flight deck that the flight time would be 1 hour and 3 minutes. 5 minutes later boarding was completed. At 10:57am, Safety demonstration video was played.

At 11:08am, pushback was commenced.

At the same time, Shenzhen Airlines B737-800, B-5778 just arrived from Wuxi as ZH9814.

Taxiing to the runway.

At 11:23am, we took off from runway 07C.

Few minutes after takeoff.

12 minutes after takoff, lunch was served. The was only one option which was fish with rice. Together they served also a bottle of water and that concluded the service.

20 minutes later, at 11:57pm, announcement from flight deck that we had started the descend into Kaohsiung airport, and expected arrival time was 12:27pm.

Very soon the east coastline of Taiwan could be seen.

We made a u-turn and approached the airport from the east.

Shortly before touch down.

At 12:26pm, we landed on Kaohsiung airport. Total flight time was 1 hour and 3 minutes.

We parked at gate 22. The Pikachu jet B-18101 A321neo from China Airlines parked next to us. This plane also flew back from Hong Kong about 30 minutes ago.

Mandarin Airlines B737-800 B-18653 arrived from Manila as CI712

Total flight route.

Thanks for reading!